Many moons ago, when the world was but a twinkle in the eye of a female god who couldn’t quite decide what colour the curtains should be, (it’s the little details that matter), and who hadn’t yet discovered that if you give men an inch they’ll want at least six, (and claim it was eight), life was so much simpler. Mainly because there was none. Life, that is. Oh, the primeval soup was bubbling away nicely on the heavenly hob, and a few chimps, inadvertently created after a night on the solar tiles with some soon to be Indian deity, had invented the typewriter and started work on the complete Shakespeare, (although their first work The Baboon of Venice was not a success, partly due to the fact that our heroine spent the entire play eating bananas and looking for fleas on Shylock), but apart from these primates, and a small cat, (long story), by the name of Closet, life didn’t really exist.
The god, (she disapproved of the word goddess in the same way that carnivores disapprove of vegetarians, actresses disapprove of other actresses, and Austrians generally disapprove), had no idea of how she had arrived at this point in time or at this part of the universe, but it didn’t really matter to her, although she did seem to remember that the decision to transfer her to the ‘Earth Project’ had involved shoes and, funnily enough, a small closet, (see above). She also gave no thought as to what her role in the grand scheme of things might be except that it would involve interior design, colour co-ordination, the occasional song, and feeding a particular feline.
She had vague memories of the time before, but since time had no real meaning, in fact it had yet to be invented, she wasn’t overly bothered. Time actually arrived completely by accident when a Swiss clock maker discovered that, by the cunning use of springs and levers, (and also by selling his soul to a small puss who appeared one evening in search of warm milk and one or two fish paste sandwiches…the cat gets everywhere, I warn you), he could travel back to the very beginning of existence. This medieval mover and shaker then ‘patented’ his Cuckoo Clock, using indeed a live Cuckoo, (who was not a happy bird by any means), in the hope of raking in the profits and making a killing in the future. On his way back to the early 17th century, having ‘lost’ his feathered friend in a drunken game of I Spy, a game that used to be played by the immortals for large sums of money, which is strange when you consider that there wasn’t much to spy as nearly everything had yet to be created, including, funnily enough, money, he decided to stop off for a sandwich in 12th century Romania. Unfortunately for him, the Cuckoo, a wily and malicious creature, got there first…and the clock maker was plucked, stuffed and given a good basting. However, he had planted the germ of an idea. Sadly, when the patent lapsed it fell into the hands of unscrupulous merchants who built the economy of Switzerland on time before investing heavily in chocolate, cheese and safe deposit boxes. One of them even attempted to keep his cheese in a deposit box made of milk chocolate but was arrested before things got really messy. Apparently, you may only use dark chocolate to store dairy products in a number of French speaking cantons.
Now, while time had no meaning, it did pass rather slowly, leaving Astrid, for this was the name of our goddess, in a desperate search for things to do in order to pass the invisible seconds of each non-existent day. She had tried reading, but at that time, (or rather non-time), there were, as yet, no books. There had been, at the very beginning, ‘the word’, but no one could remember what ‘the word’ was. Many suggestions had been made as to what it might be, and most of them are unrepeatable and consist of about four letters. (Western gods would seem to have the sense of humour of a teenage male and about as much intelligence.) It has lately been suggested that ‘the word’ in question was the first word uttered by ‘god’ as he started work on the planet earth, which would make it ‘ouch’…this particular all powerful being was not very good with his angelic hands and had only succeeded in hitting his thumb with Thor’s hammer as he attempted to nail the stars into the sky. But to get back to our story, reading was a no-go area.
She then tried knitting, or would have if there had been any sheep. There were needles and patterns, and Zeus had even ordered a new cardigan for those chilly autumn nights on Olympus, however the lack of wool brought the project to an abrupt end. And then Sigu, who had a thing about modern animal design, came up with the idea for the Alpaca, but the early prototype didn’t quite meet the specifications laid down in his initial plans. ‘Too many teeth and not enough hair’ was the official reason given for the failure of the Mark I, and by the time an improved design arrived, workers had already been laid-off in the Bolivian Mammal Works, (or BMW as the management called it), and the entire idea was mothballed for several generations.
However, her dalliance with South American entities alerted her to a certain something which had come into existence after an incident in the eternal kitchen. A small nuclear explosion had occurred when Ra allowed a little gold and plutonium to come into contact by accident while he was trying to impress his date for the evening. After the smoke had cleared and Daphne, (for it was she), had given her escort the news that his presence was no longer required this side of Hades, all that was left of the would be romantic interlude was a small ball of precious metal. In a fit of pique, Ra threw it across the universe where it bounced off Saturn, beginning a chain of events that would see rings appearing around the would be planet, and then pinged back towards this side of the solar system, deflected off the sun, and bounced several times on the lunar surface, turning off all the lights in one particular area and leaving us with the dark side of the moon. The bean then accelerated into earthly orbit and imbedded itself in a Peruvian hillside, where, over a period of time that might have been anything from a month to a lifetime, (remember, time was somewhere between the tick and the tock at that point in history), it took root and began to grow. After many blue moons the first shoots appeared, followed after an eternity by some fruits, and, to cut a long story short, due to an intervention by the afore mentioned cat, (don’t ask), the first chocolate was produced from these pods, for the plant was cocoa.
And what did Astrid do with the chocolate? That would be telling. I’ll simply say that if you attempted it in public today it might leave you with an enormous smile on your face but lead to a lengthy spell in prison. Just talk to the cat. Any cat…
